I’m very late this year, so no time to longlist then shortlist. My top reads among the economics titles I’ve read during 2019 (for reasons of sanity I’ve excluded the non-economics ones including the terrific crop on AI) were:
Palaces for the People Eric Klinenberg (review)
The Globotics Revolution Richard Baldwin (review)
The Economics of AI edited by Agarwal, Gans and Goldfarb
The Technology Trap Carl Frey (review)
Globalists Quinn Slobodian (review)
Extreme Economies Richard Davies (review)
Good Economics for Hard Times Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (review)
The Great Reversal Thomas Philippon (review)
As always, the rules are that this is an entirely personal and arbitrary choice from among the books I’ve read during the year, no matter when they were published. The prize is that I offer to take the author out for a meal. As always, it’s a really difficult final choice – but I’m going to go for Extreme Economies by Richard Davies.
This is the 8th Enlightened Economist prize by the way. Previous winners were:
2018: Republic of Beliefs by Kaushik Basu
2017: Economics for the Common Good Jean Tirole
2016: Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution Rebecca Spang
2015: Mastering Metrics Joshua Angrist and Steffen Pischke
2014: Complexity and the Art of Public Policy by David Colander and Roland Kupers